Elite-style space trading sims (8)

Hello, I started this thread to recommend and talk about space trading sims in the style of Braben and Bell's venerable Elite.The ones I have personally played are Vega Strike and Oolite, the latter of which actually uses the same core ships as the original game. Oolite has a bazillion expansion packs (OXPs) being developed by a large and active user community as well, giving you all kinds of new ships, dockable stations, weapons, equipment, reskins for classic ships and stations, and even missions to try in the event that you ever get bored with the core game. I've poured many an hour of my free time into trading my way from a humble Cobra Mk III up to a Boa freighter, whose rather slow speed is its main handicap.

>>1 here, just adding that Ad Astra does not use Newtonian physics, and so it's easy to bring your ship to a complete halt by simply reducing your drive output to zero. This is much the same as in Elite and Oolite (and in fact most space sims I've seen). Unlike those two games, however, in Ad Astra you can not only fly forwards, but backwards as well, which presumably allows for much fancier maneuvering once you've gotten used to the controls. I haven't yet. (´・ω・`)

Having played a bit more Ad Astra, I can say it's quite a fun game, but because of the default controls where pitch and roll are mouse-controlled, aiming tends to be a bit of a bitch. When I try to assist police ships in taking down a pirate, I almost inevitably end up accidentally firing at a cop, and being promptly blown apart as soon as the pirate ship has stopped being a police concern and begun its new life as a salvage target. I have yet to try its joystick control options.

>>4I have never played it, but what I've read on Wikipedia does not suggest too obvious similarities.

First and foremost, Elite is a single-player game played without an internet connection. All ships other than your own are computer-controlled. Eve Online is a massively-multiplayer online game, with all the social interaction, collaboration and competition between players this implies.